The World Powerboat Championship

[Gnome]

Two rounds of the World Powerboat Championship was run in Trondheim, and I was there the last weekend. I’m still using a analogue camera, but now the pictures have been developed and scanned. http://www.class-1.com/

This is just a picture I found. The boats are 42 feet long. Bigger than they look on pictures. It is pretty amazing looking at these boats racing at up to 260 km/h! You should try it some time.

Two Lamborghini V12 engines power most of the boats. 9 litres, and 900 hp. The engine was first developed for the LM100, but it was never used in any car. That’s not the best sound though. At racing rpm they make a high frequency whine. The Ugland team (red boat) is using a supercharged V8. This one has a much cooler roar! Fewer cylinders gives lower frequency...

There were three camera choppers to catch the event on film. The only problem is that the boats are faster than the choppers, both around corners and in a straight line. Sometimes they just started filming a straight in front of the boat, and filmed the boat as it caught up with them. Another alternative is to start at some altitude, and dive in above the boat. Then they had enough speed to keep up with the boat for a while. Pretty cool!

Here are some of my pictures of the event:

The Ugland boat in the pit.


Spirit of Norway from behind in the pit.


One of the two Victory teams passing by.


The boats were passing very close to that marker, and it wasn’t very far from us either. What an experience!


Look at that rooster tail! Something went wrong here. Suddenly the boat was really slow, and threw a lot of water in the air.


An Arab is cleaning the propellers of one of the Victory boats.

[stmoritzer]

Amazing speed and nice pictures !

[Cornutu]

"An Arab is cleaning the propellers of one of the Victory boats."

I know you meant nothing by this but its funny.

also I thought they went faster than 160mph, saw one on discovery channel that did 178mph
happen to know the world record? googld doesn't seem to...

[Gnome]

Originally Posted by Cornutu "An Arab is cleaning the propellers of one of the Victory boats." I know you meant nothing by this but its funny. also I thought they went faster than 160mph, saw one on discovery channel that did 178mph happen to know the world record? googld doesn't seem to...

The comment about the Arab was meant to be funny, and nothing more.

I know that at least some of the boats made by Nor-tech Powerboats in Florida (http://www.nor-techboats.com/)are faster than these Offshore Class 1 boats. And this is normal civilian boats with virtually no safety equipment in the cockpit! I am sure that there are other manufacturers in that market.

There are a lot of definitions of speed records. Russ Wick has set the world record for propeller driven boats. It was a hydroplane that ran 205 mph! Of course this boat needs flat water, and more importantly no wind. This guy has set a lot of other records too. A jet driven hydroplane is also quite cool.

Fountain Powerboats http://www.fountainpowerboats.com/index.asp has the record for mono-hulled or Vee bottomed boats. This is 171mph.

[RAMMIUS]

this is one awesome competition , too bad we don`t get to see live transmissions

and it`s dominated by boats with Lamborghini engines for years